Avoiding Diagnosis?

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My mom had sent me to a social skills group for years before it even occurred to me that I might have a disorder. Because it was an "after school activity," I lumped it in with my piano, gymnastics, ballet, and girl scouts activities in my mind; like girl scouts, group was an unpleasant social activity I just had to put up with, just with boys instead of with girls. Important to note is that it was (and still is, I guess) a group that specialized in behavioral therapy for autism spectrum children and teens.

A few years later, it finally clicked that my social problems were not because I was inferior (as my classmates told me) or superior (as I, being the pretentious brat I was, believed), but that I was fundamentally different somehow from all my peers. I concluded my brain was wired differently, and decided I should try to work around it rather than wonder why people wouldn't accept me. I changed elementary schools frequently; my mom wanted a better academic environment for me, so I complained the classes were too easy whenever my social problems got too bad. It wasn't too far off from the truth. When I was a kid, I was good at schoolwork.

Eventually, my mom let me test into some summer academic programs, and I had the time of my life for the first week of the program...until I realized that "gifted" kids weren't any nicer to people they thought were weird; they were just more subtle when it came to hazing them, especially in herds. Then again, it only took me a week to figure out that it was me they were making fun of, because I was "gifted," too.

It wasn't until a few painful years later that a fellow middle schooler at my "gifted" camp (and one I barely knew, at that) suggested I might have AS. It was something I had never heard of before, and I figured that if my mom had thought I had it, she would have had plenty of opportunity to get me tested, especially since I was still going to that stupid social skills group, and I still didn't like it.

Between then and high school, two other people have asked me if I had AS. None of the three have ever met, to my knowledge, nor do they even live in the same cities.

So I began to wonder, naturally, why my mom did not have me diagnosed. Surely my therapist, who had known me for over six years, would have mentioned it to her, or to me, if I had a disorder, right? And yet, to my knowledge, there is nothing on my medical record that says I was evaluated in any way for an autism spectrum disorder. When I did get tested for disabilities, the person who tested me told my mom I have ADHD, dysgraphia (later rediagnosed as motor apraxia so I can actually get support for it), and maybe NVLD. She then told me I had ADHD.

Whenever I have a problem with my studies, my mom always blames it on my ADHD. My theory is that she does that because ADHD is a "socially acceptable" problem that lots of people my age have (or at least pretend to have so they can get medicated for it). Autism, on the other hand, is a dirty word, because it means that I'm different from everyone else.

Never mind that actually getting evaluated would save us both a lot of stress.

So, getting to my point (TLDR? Just look here.): Is there any good reason my mom would have had to avoid getting me diagnosed? Ooh, and I must add two more things: My mom minored in psychology when she was an undergrad, and she took at least one abnormal psych course, so she definitely has at least a basic idea of how diagnosis should work. Additionally, my brother has a number of behavioral problems that have surfaced within the last 10 or so years, and they're being treated as a result of comorbid ADHD and ODD when he has just as many AS symptoms as I do, if not more. What sort of reason can one have from insisting that it isn't autism?! I mean, it wouldn't hurt to check, right? Furthermore, it's possible that she's already suspected it and my psychiatrist confirmed it years ago, but she decided to keep it from me for some reason. But why would someone do that, either?! It's not as if hiding that fact from me could protect me from something.

((Because my mom does seem so averse to the topic, I plan to actually get myself tested as soon as I have my own medical insurance, so she doesn't have to deal with it. Eventually, I might work up the courage to ask my brother if he ever has plans to do the same.))

Denial.

The fact that autism has no cure whereas you can at least give meds for ADD or something.

Fear of being considered to blame for it.

All kinds of possibilities. Many of which are not even remotely rational.

Coming out of the woodwork to post this.

My parents refused to let me be tested because they were concerned a diagnosis would be a larger stigma than the social problems I had. They were very concerned that my school labeling me as "special needs" would be detrimental to my academic progress (for example, I would probably not have been eligible for the gifted program at my school). One of my parents professionally worked with and screened children for learning disorders, ADD/ADHD, autism spectrum, etc. and essentially tested me own her own and concluded I was high-functioning enough to manage without a diagnosis and she disguised behavioral therapy as play for a long time. They didn't mention the whole "yep, the reason you had so much trouble with social s**t is your brain was different from almost everyone you ever interacted with" thing until recently. Their reasoning was essentially that they were worried that, (when I was little) I would "psych myself out and not live up to my full potential if I knew society would essentially consider me disabled for the rest of my life" and (when I was older) that I would "use a diagnosis as an excuse to stop trying to fit in with other people."

So...that's one reason.